Begin Again
by Grav
Summary: There is only one place she can go.  Part II of Helen Does the Time Warp, Again.


**AN**: Apparently there will be a series, expanding out around Long Road Home. Yay?

**Spoilers**: Into the Black

**Disclaimer**: Not mine, no profit, donate to S4K. :)

**Rating**: Teen

**Character**: Helen Magnus

**Summary**: There is only one place she can go. 

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><p><strong>Begin Again<strong>

There is only one place she can go.

The Sanctuary is off-limits, she decides before she even makes it to the edge of the street, out of the carriage traffic, to hide her outlandishness in the shadows drawn on soot-stained brick by the flickering gaslights. Watson will notice, even if she manages to find a proper dress by then, and when he does, all hell will break loose. Sanctuary for All, but not for her. Not this time.

She thinks hard, trying to recall who else is in residence right now. Nikola is in America, but Nigel is here, staying with them between heists that are not as clandestine as he would like to believe. She doesn't know where John is. She never did.

She hasn't the means to get to Hollow Earth, and no vampire shield even if she had money for such an expedition. Acting is out of the question, by her own admission in the caves of Praxis. She told John they couldn't change the past, and she believes it even standing here on cobbles that haven't met cars yet, and breathing air tainted by the coal burning industries of 19th century London. Hiding is her only option, and she has to hide quickly, before she is arrested for public indecency and sent to Bethlem if she tries to explain. She has a vision of James, called to her cell, and realizes that getting out would probably cause more problems than getting in.

So don't get in, she tells herself, and shrinks back against the bricks. She hates everything about this, hates that even after a century of practice, it takes only one whiff of London air to set her back to thinking she has to run everything past James on the grounds that he can accomplish more than she can, or at least with a great deal less effort. She hates Adam more than she's ever hated anyone, except John. Right now she hates him most of all.

She allows herself one impractical, dangerous even, moment of rage. How could he think that she would choose to do this again? To give up everything she had worked so hard for just for him? To leave aside what she had come to see as all the best parts of herself for something so common as _love_. She feels pity next, an unexpected wave of it crushing her up against the wall, because she realizes that she's had a century and more live and love, finding out her strengths at each and coming to understand her place between them, and he has had only death and pain. But that is no excuse, and she hardens her heart in the wake of John Druitt once more. He had no right, he had _never had it_, and yet here she is, stuck once more in a time where men like him have every right there is to be had.

The moment passes, and a carriage rattles past her, not close, but the noise is enough to startle her back into remembering that she is at large in London with nothing but a smart phone that won't be picking up a signal for decades yet, and dressed in such a way as to scandalize entire neighbourhoods just by walking through them. She needs to get off the streets.

It's dark, a single mercy in this, and when she takes off her coat and ties it about her waist it gives at least the silhouette of a skirt, though a skirt that's still entire continents from decent. She fades as best she can, black clothes and black soot and stark shadows light by bright gas, and gets her bearings. She's not cold. She can smell the river. She knows where, and approximately when, she is.

Some of them will have died, child bearing, disease, men who chose to follow the Ripper's example, but there will still be one who recognizes her, and Helen knows exactly where to look.

She centres herself, preparing to enter into battle once again, though this battle will be different from any she has ever fought, and sets out for Whitechapel. 

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><p><strong>finis<strong>

Gravity_Not_Included, June 22, 2011


End file.
